


Draco Malfoy and the Unknown Element

by Reeve



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Gen, Mirror of Erised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reeve/pseuds/Reeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco hadn’t known about the Room of Requirement before his fifth year. But once he did, it changed everything. Because he required something. Very badly.</p><p>The Mirror of Erised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draco Malfoy and the Unknown Element

Draco’s fingers tightened over the ends of the armrests. The chair probably got that a lot, from all manner of dubious types that found themselves under Wizengamot trial. Restraints held Draco’s arms firmly to the chair, as if he would spring away given the chance. But the tightening of his fingers was the only symptom of discomfort Harry saw. Draco’s face was calm. Impassive.

Disinterested, really. 

Perhaps Draco knew how this would go. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps there wasn’t much for him to try to escape to. The war was years over, but reputations were hard to shake off, and from what Harry had heard, the Malfoys hadn’t been faring well among the new social scene. 

Sometimes Harry had wondered what Draco had been doing since the war, having narrowly escaped being sent to Azkaban, and wondered if adulthood and safety had softened any of his edges. But, before today, he hadn't seen Draco in a long time, and had been too busy to find out. Everyone had their own business to be getting on with.

“Mr Malfoy,” the growl of Chief Warlock Bryan Finch interrupted Harry’s thoughts. “You are charged with the illegal acquisition and hoarding of a Grade Three unique magical item. Had it not occurred to you that being in possession of such an item made it manifestly unwise for you to strut into the Ministry of Magic? With signatures of its identity so readily detectable, when your wand was inspected at entrance?”

“It was a stroll.”

“Excuse me?”

“It wasn’t a strut. It was a stroll,” Draco said, still impassive. 

“Its description is immaterial,” Finch said. He looked at the court scribe. “Let the record show the defendant toying with the court in matters of irrelevant semantics.”

“It serves to illustrate a point,” Draco said, deadpan. “Since the court seems to hold no respect for accuracy, it’s then unsurprising they also didn’t register the reason for my visit. Which was to give the item to the ministry. Transporting it has the unavoidable side effect of leaving identity signatures on my wand. Should I have carried it in by hand, instead? It’s much bigger than me, you know.”

Harry wished Draco would show anger, frustration, anything. It was unnerving to watch him like this. It made it harder to read him.

“The Ministry is aware of your surrender of the item,” Finch said, indignant. “But you’ve taken a long time to hand it in, haven’t you? How long had you retained access to it? A month? A year?”

Draco’s fingers squeezed the chair again. “Longer,” he whispered.

Murmuring rippled through the jurors.

“Why now?” Finch asked, frowning at a piece of parchment in front of him as he scribbled on it. “Why had you not surrendered it earlier?”

“I needed it.”

Finch looked up, surprised. “Needed it?”

Draco seemed to think the question rhetorical, as he made no answer. No Verituserum in play, then, Harry concluded.

Finch lay down his quill, and folded his hands together. “Mr Malfoy, your resistance to our line of questioning will result in a much longer session than anybody here has an appetite for. Including yourself, I imagine. It’s not our practice to give a defendant reign of proceedings. But, in light of current progress, the court invites you to give your account of events from your own perspective, and at your leisure. In case you should choose to squander this opportunity on frivolous time-wasting and story-telling, be warned that it will be recorded as official testimony, and thus liable for legal response.”

Harry wasn’t the only person looking at Finch in surprise. More than a few in the jury box were doing the same. 

“Mr Malfoy,” Finch said, leaning back from his bench and folding his hands, disregarding his quill. It was an empty gesture. The quill was recording everything by itself now, anyway. “The floor is yours.”

Harry saw Draco breathe deeply, just once, before returning to his normal measure.

“The Mirror of Erised had been poorly secured, in the year I first attended Hogwarts,” Draco started. “I discovered it in an empty classroom, where I’d gone to escape Pansy Parkinson, who was eager to become an ever-present henchman. I already had two, you see. She was surplus to requirement, and talked way too much. It’s an undesirable quality in a henchman. They need to be pliant for instruction, and silent for intimidation. Pansy would have been quite unsuitable.”

Harry blinked. This talkative testimony wasn’t what he’d expected from the otherwise laconic defendant. It seemed very off topic, too. Surely Finch would put a stop to it.

It was a test. Draco was testing Finch’s claim of free reign, for authenticity.

It seemed to hold. A few wizards in the jury box were frowning and shifting angrily, but Finch merely looked back at Draco in a still gaze, and waited.

Now that Draco had verified he truly had freedom to speak how he may, he seemed unsure of what to do with the liberty. Harry found himself holding his breath, waiting for Draco’s narrative. What could Draco have wanted with the Mirror of Erised? It must have been important to him. In other confrontations, Draco would show anger, entitlement, audacity…all the  hallmarks of someone who’s sure they’re right and the judicial system was just meddling. But about this, he was protecting himself. His closed expressions and measured tones had made no betrayal of personal stakes. 

What could matter that much?

“I knew what it was, of course,” Draco finally said. “What with its unique frame embellishment. The reflection tipped me off, too.”

The reference to the mirror’s ability to show one’s strongest desire at the time, instead of the reality facing it, reminded Harry of his own discovery of the mirror. Back then, his small pyjama’d self had been mesmerised by a vision of his parents. And his best friend Ron had been transfixed by a reflection of prestige and recognition.

But Draco already had both of those things, and wealth as well. What else could an 11-year-old have wished for? Maybe he saw himself older, and as the right-hand supporter of Voldemort. After all, Draco hadn’t known what the man was really like, back then. Was that what he’d seen? Being an abetter of the most evil villain of his time? 

Harry felt sick, in anticipation of hearing it.

“I’d heard that people usually see a vision of their ideal future,” Draco said. “Or of an alternate present. But my first reflection was of a past event. When I was on the train to Hogwarts.”

Harry’s brow raised involuntarily. As he recalled, though it was a good decade ago now, Draco hadn’t been very happy about that trip. 

“I’d heard Harry Potter was on the train,” Draco said. “Everyone was wanting a look at the legend. Of course, intellectually, I knew he’d be like any other 11-year-old kid. But his legend had been allowed a long time to grow, by then, and legend has a way of distorting perception. In the minds of the rest of us, he was half hero, half unknown element. If he could defeat a dark wizard by doing nothing at all, sitting in a crib and sucking his fingers, what would could he do now? Of course, it would be an advantage to have Potter as an ally, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to meet him. Like everyone else, I was curious.

“I found him in a compartment with two other students. It appeared they’d already befriended him—a Muggleborn, and a pureblood of unfortunate means.”

Harry tried not to snort at the pretentious way of saying Ron was poor. Still, at least Draco had refrained from calling Hermione a Mudblood. Of course, being currently prosecuted might have had something to do with his uncharacteristic graciousness.

“I introduced myself to Potter. I was careful not to engage his companions. Potter was still an unknown element. I needed to see what he was like, independent of social politics.” Harry saw Draco take another slow breath, before his story deviated from Harry’s own recollection. “Weasley—the pureblood he was with—laughed at my introduction. I was irritated, but didn’t have time to respond, myself. Potter did it first. Nobility and defence of the mistreated would later become his patented characteristic, and I saw it then. He didn’t care about wealth, even in the Mirror. He didn’t care that my family was rich, but he also didn’t see Weasley’s lack of wealth as reason to vilify someone who had it.”

Harry blinked. This was different. Though strangely compatible with his own values. It was just not how it went. At all.

“He left Weasley in the carriage, muttering obscenities around a chocolate frog. And he followed me out. ”

The court was silent. Was Draco finished? He wasn’t offering any more testimony, but he wasn’t looking at Finch, either.

Finch pressed his lips together tightly. He still didn’t speak, but Harry guessed he dearly wanted to. And Draco didn’t speak either, instead staring vacantly in front of him, as if seeing something. As if seeing the Mirror.

“Mr Malfoy,” Finch broke the silence. “I don’t seek to violate permissions I gave you before, but feel I must speak now, if only to prevent a stall of all proceedings. Your silence behooves me to prompt you with further questions, but my integrity restrains me to use them only to further your testimony.” 

Draco blinked, probably surprised a representative of the Ministry wasn’t taking every opportunity to malign him. 

“So I ask, then,” Finch continued, “about the extent to which Mr Potter followed you. Did he join you in your house?”

Harry almost gagged, horrified. He, in Slytherin?

“Of course not,” Draco finally replied. “Harry Potter is no Slytherin. Sneaky as hell, to be sure, and with questionable ethics, but still no Slytherin. He was sorted into Gryffindor.” Draco’s face was relaxed. He was in a comfortable place, even if only in his memory. “But we had…an accord. We were…friends.”

Draco’s eyes met Finch’s, now. “That’s what I saw in the Mirror of Erised, in my first year. Harry Potter and I were friends.” His mouth edged upwards. “And I was better at Quidditch than he was, of course.”

That was far from the ambitious picture Harry had been expecting. No politics? No game plan? No strategy? They were just…friends? Friends playing Quidditch? Harry was so surprised, he was too distracted to be offended at his sporting capability downgrade, in Draco’s fantasy world.

“Dumbledore took the mirror away soon after that,” Draco said. His voice was wistful. “There was a rumour that Potter found it at the end of the year, but the rumour also included him drinking poison, battling a homicidal garden, winning a murderous chess game, and fighting the Dark Lord for a magic rock, so I didn’t count it credible. The rumour mill at Hogwarts was never renown for its accuracy or helpfulness. This was evidenced in my second year, when it was rife with the news that Potter was the Heir of Slytherin.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the jury box, before Draco added, “It was bullocks, of course.

“Not having access to Erised or its intoxicating lies, I got distracted with reality, after that. The reality that we weren’t friends. The reality that Potter hated me. And soon, the reality that I genuinely hated him back.” 

Any compassion Harry had started feeling for Draco dissipated. 

“I don’t know what the mirror would have shown me, then, if I knew where it was,” Draco continued. “Maybe the same thing. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. It wouldn’t happen.” Draco leaned forward, almost imperceptibly, and his speech quickened. “And that’s the point of desire, isn’t it? Desire is an active thing; a pursuit. Nobody desires what they already have; they can only appreciate it. What I saw would never— It could never have—” 

He stopped. Leaned back against the backrest of his chair. Flexed his fingers within the constraints; the fingers that had become clenched. Now they resettled on the ends of the armrests.

“When I heard him speak Parseltongue during a duel in my second year,” Draco resumed, again calm and slow, “my interested piqued again. There was that unknown element. But with our interaction firmly cemented in hostile territory, my interest was now more…academic. I wasn’t his friend, and he wasn’t mine. But I’d be…another kind of student. An experimental researcher. Potter looked like a normal boy, but he couldn’t be one, and I had to know how.”

His tone grew almost sad again, as he said, “I’d think about Erised’s lie, of course. Sometimes. But it just made me angrier. Which made me more hostile to Potter. It how relative measures work, see. I remembered how he looked at me when he was my friend—even though it was only ever an image—but the comparison made the reality all the more harsh. So I was harsh to him, in return.”

Well, that just wasn’t fair, Harry thought. Draco was horrid to him because of something he didn’t even do? While Harry could see the rationale behind it, it still unsettled him.

“In my third year," Draco said, "I scared him into casting a Patronus charm. As part of my experimental research.”

Harry saw Finch blink rapidly. The man opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, lips pressed together tightly.

“I’d heard he could make one,” Draco said, “or something like it, and I needed to measure it. To know how powerful Potter was. To learn his unknown element. The experiment needed to be done from non-threatening starting point, for any helpful result. Potter would never be calm in any corridor or classroom he shared with me—our historical animosity had seen to that—so it had to be somewhere he wouldn’t expect an attack.  

“Potter loved Quidditch. Short of killing evil overlords, flying was his raison d'etre. It was his place of rejuvenation and safety. The last place he’d expect an attack from anything but a bludger. So during a Ravenclaw/Gryffindor match, I dressed as a Dementor and surprised him. It…didn’t go as I’d expected.” 

Harry smirked as Draco continued, “I got my results, so as far as research goes it would count as success, but I was sent screaming off the field by an incorporeal-yet-competent Patronus, which, I’ll add, is a lot more intimidating when it’s up close and rushing for your face.”

Harry’s smirk turned into a grin. Draco’s humiliation had been a silver-lining moment.

“Fourth year, I expected everything to end. Potter was chosen as a Tri-Wizard Champion, however legitimately or not, and everyone knows the mortality rates of those things. After all that time, and after my own investments in researching him—” Harry balked to hear it, “—I couldn’t let him be offed by a school competition.

“My great-uncle Bilbius Malfoy ran for Governor of the British Guild of Wizarding Parliamentary Administration, once. But the surrounding populace wasn’t enthused at the possibility of his securing it, and wanted him barred from the post. So strong was the force of public opinion, he was withdrawn from the candidate pool. Britain was probably better off for it, truth be told. Bilbius' idea of admirable administration was cataloging his catalogues. He even alphabetised his dragon enclosures by species, when everyone knows dragons should be ordered by habitat and temperament.

“I thought Potter would be pulled from the competition, if I could sway public opinion against him enough. It was leaning that way anyway, with the assumption that he’d cheated to be chosen in the first place, so I tried to strengthen the sentiment with derisive badges. The language was petty, perhaps, but considering my youth and time constraints, it was the best I could manage at the time.

“When the badges proved insufficient—the opinions of school kids don’t sway much—I tried a heavier approach, making efforts to garner public distaste via the newspaper. Facts were creatively embellished in places, but so they had to be, to get a response strong enough to force Potter out of the tournament.”

Harry fumed. How dare Draco make out his vindictive slander to the Daily Prophet as doing Harry a favour!

“It didn’t work,” Draco said. “Obviously. The court will remember that was the year Potter remained in the tournament, won it, then only breaths later announced the Dark Lord was here…”

This time when he tapered off, the silence was short. A wrinkled witch with sharp red-rimmed spectacles and a temper to match, erupted, “What about the mirror?! This has nothing to do with the mirror! Mr Finch! I implore—!”

There was a large bang from Mr Finch. Harry couldn’t see a gavel. Or a giant firework, for that matter. But the effect was the same. The witch closed her mouth immediately. Her mouth pinched and her eyes narrowed.

“Mr Malfoy,” Finch said, “perhaps you may be so good as to ease Mrs Gillygate’s distress. Older folk do find it tiring to hold on to an exuberant ride, waiting for its end. I expect she would be reassured to know it was in sight.”

“Would she?” Draco said, eyeing Finch’s own impatient face, which was not young by anyone’s estimation. “Might I suggest that she reconsider her suitability to the juror pool, in that case.” Mrs Gillygate eyes and mouth widened, but before she could speak, Draco said, “A story’s ending makes no sense without its beginning and its middle. If it’s more suitable to reconvene court for a continuation at a later time, Mrs Gillygate may find it rejuvenating to spend the recess with something calming and accommodating, where she may see everything just how she likes it. I know where she could find something like that.”

There was a tittering from two witches behind Mrs Gillygate, but they hushed guiltily at Finch’s sharp glance. 

Draco still hadn’t looked at Harry. If he would, maybe it would help piece together the fragments of his story with how Harry remembered Draco from school. If Harry could just look in his eyes; see Draco’s expression without the pomp of social posturing…

“Do continue your story, then,” Finch said. He sounded tired, and Harry wondered if he regretted his graciousness. “I believe you were up to the part where you published lies about Mr Potter for the greater good.”

Harry expected Draco to retaliate. The statement was technically true, but it was a bitter spin of what Draco had said. Harry wondered if Draco would clam up and refuse to give the rest of his account. He found himself wildly hoping that wouldn’t happen.

“It would have been,” Draco deadpanned, “if it had worked. As it was, I had to protect him whilst fighting against the social tide. And covertly, of course.”

Harry was stunned. Draco couldn’t possibly believe he was any sort of protection. Not then. He was given his first position of power after than, when he was made a school prefect, and from then he’d only made Harry’s life harder. Harry hoped Finch would interrupt and announce Draco’s liberty of speech forfeit, on account of wasting the court’s time telling blatant lies. 

He frowned when Finch made no such move.

“I was an Inquisitorial Squad member reporting to Professor Umbridge, in my fifth year,” Draco said. “I found trivial but aggravating ways to antagonise Potter—taking house points and such—so I wouldn’t tip him off. Our respective alliances were cemented by then. It’s not like he’d ever think well of me, but he couldn’t know I was doing him any favours. He’d have been unlikely to believe it anyway, granted. But reputations are delicate things, on the outside. An adolescent will hold on to a first impression like a Rottweiler, but adults are a lot more aware of change. I needed to preserve my reputation with the ones in my family’s political circle, and with students who report to them.

“While Gryffindor’s point count went down, Umbridge’s foiled attempts to silence and torment Potter went up. She was known for her draconian detention practices— ” Harry’s face twisted wryly at the choice of adjective, “—so it wasn’t difficult to guess what use she was intending for the censoring potion she was preparing to infuse into her ink. Any student who used the hexed ink to write that they mustn’t talk about chocolate frogs, for example, would find themselves forever unable to even utter the words, in any capacity.” He smiled grimly. “If Potter was planning a career as a chocolatier, I imagine it would have been quite detrimental. As it was, I doubt Umbridge would have limited the censorship to confectionary.”

Harry swallowed his shocked breath. His left hand still showed the faint scars of the words Umbridge had made him carve into it—I must not tell lies. That had been horrific enough, but Harry’s mind froze when it contemplated what she could have done with censorship ink. Although his claims about Voldemort hadn’t been lies, if the ink worked according to her intentions he may have found himself unable to talk about Voldemort anyway. Ever. And even if the ink really only stopped him from telling lies, while it would have been vindicating to keep telling her Voldemort was back, it still would have been awful for war strategy. And personally. 

It would have been like… like… being on Verituserum. For the rest of his life. 

Harry’s stomach turned. He swallowed again.

“As you’d expect,” Draco said, “the potion is highly difficult, and highly illegal. Professor Snape would never have supplied it. But she had alternate contacts. Contacts afflicted by loose lips, and even looser morals, when firewhisky’s involved. Umbridge was to receive the parcel by an exchange in Hogsmeade Village. A gangly wizard was to hand it over to her inside the Hogsmeade Post Office. Of course, it’s not unusual to see folks with unlabelled parcels in and around there.”

Harry found himself leaning forward with interest. Several of the jurors were too, but Draco seemed unaware. He continued to recite the story in measured tones.

“Inquisitorial Squad members were encouraged to recon and report on students’ leisure time on Hogsmeade weekends, too. I visited the post office under the guise of asking the manager about illicit student activity—perhaps communication channels had been arranged via small-distance Scot owl, in which case he could have reported a rise in hireage revenue on student Hogsmeade weekends.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. That would have a been a clumsy and cumbersome way of communicating. Draco must have known that.

“I had Blaise Zabini with me, one day. While he occupied the manager with queries, I…surveyed the environment.” He paused. “Do I need to describe for the court, the event of the breakout? I’m sure you’re aware, given the frenetic fuss from surrounding stores, of the afternoon half the post office’s owls escaped. The juvenile ones, most of them not ready for service.”

“We are aware,” Finch said, grimly. “Several significant families were most inconvenienced when overzealous and untrained owls wrenched parchments and packets and books from their hands—even sandwiches—and took off with them all over London.” 

Harry did remember seeing a news article about it. Truthfully though, he and Ron had been more excited about the idea of cakes and teacups being delivered to treetops all over the city.

“Later it was found the cages concerned had a time-dependant activation release charm on them,” Finch continued, eyeing Draco. “But the manager’s wand showed no traces of it, in testing, and he swears he saw nobody go in the back of the post office.”

“Well, no, he wouldn’t,” Draco said. “Blaise can be very beguiling, when he tries. It’s the Italian heritage, I think.”

Draco caused all that? Why would he admit to it? Surely he was just heaping more charges onto his pile, now. 

Finch’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “You’re responsible for that?”

“I didn’t say that, sir. I can’t say I know how many times Blaise had been there before. He likes birds, you see. I think he might like the manager, too. Which would explain the beguiling thing. But I never asked.”

“Of course,” said Finch, dourly. “Would there have been a purpose to such an act of hooliganism?”

“There are some people who like to think everything happens for a reason,” Draco said. “They’d perhaps be reassured to know of a small and spastic owl called Spitball. Not the most attractive of birds, or aptly named, but very sharp-eyed. He went diving through the ruckus, retrieved a specific parcel from a specific pair of gangly hands, flew over a specific bottomless pit at the boundary of the rural asylum, and dropped it in.” 

Draco looked satisfied, and Harry knew that nobody believed for a moment that the ruckus was Blaise’ doing. 

“Enough items were being snatched as to make Umbridge’s complain a drop in the bucket, if she ever did register complaint,” Draco said. “Which she wouldn’t, of course. Not formally. She’d have to state the parcel's source and contents. As for her contacts, she refused to pay them for what she hadn’t received, and they refused to supply any more until she had. Such vendors aren’t in the business for charity. So I’m told.”

“That’s…” Finch seemed lost for words, “…an ostentatious effort, all to abscond with one piece of mail.”

Draco smiled. A little. “Some folks are ostentatious people. Maybe it’s another Italian thing.”

Like hell.

Draco’s face lapsed back into slackness as he fell back into his memories. “I intervened, directly and indirectly, in three more attempts on Potter’s life and credibility that year. That Umbridge woman was truly mad, it has to be said. But I couldn’t stop her from finding Potter and his band of renegades, in the Room of Requirement. I hadn’t known about the room, then. But once I did, it changed everything. Because I required something. Very badly. And the next year—my sixth year—I got it.”

Potter’s gut went cold. Sixth year. When Draco used the Room of Requirement to secretly repair a cabinet that transported a team of attacking psychopaths into the school.

“What did you require?” Finch said. “In the room. What did you find?”

Draco was silent a moment, before he said, “I found the Mirror of Erised.”

Draco had many skills, and though catching the snitch appeared not be one of them, commanding the attention of a room clearly was. Even Mrs Gillygate wasn’t complaining about how drawn out this was, anymore.

“As the court’s aware from prior audience, I spent much of that year repairing a cabinet, that, regrettably, would later allow saboteurs entrance to the castle.”

Regrettably? Harry’s gut twisted. Allowing those monsters in had been the whole point of repairing it in the first place. It was the intent all along. That was why Draco had done it; why he’d spent all year on it!

“I was chosen for the task because as a student, I was already in the castle. Also, the Dark Lord wanted to torment my father for an earlier failure of his own. I suppose he thought involving and endangering me would be father’s torment.”

Harry doubted it. Draco was bred for Voldemort's service. And by sixth year he was already involved, anyway. Already endangered, although, not an innocent victim. 

He suspected Draco doubted it too, as his tone had sounded almost confused.

“But I had something else on my side,” Draco said. “I’m good at fixing things. I’m very, very good.” 

Harry would have thought Draco was boasting, but his candour didn’t match that notion. Draco spoke slowly. Factually. 

“I see how things fit together. How elements work together. It’s why I’m also good at potions.” He voice quietened, and Harry strained to hear. “I didn’t need a year to fix that cabinet.”

Harry saw Draco’s fingers trace a whorl in the wood of his armrest. Draco wasn’t looking at it, though. His gaze looked far away.

“There were a lot of things in that room. A lot of…hidden things. The Mirror of Erised was one. When I looked in the mirror again—the first time in five years—it had been more out of curiosity than anything. I wanted to know what it would show me. I couldn’t work alongside it, with the cabinet, and not know. After all that had passed since my first year, after all that had developed both politically and personally, I knew the reflection wouldn’t be the same. It couldn’t be the same.”

“So what was it, now?” Finch asked, after a beat of silence.

“It was the same.”

Harry released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He’d been braced to hear something about the war being over, but with a win for the other side.

“I wasn’t eleven. And I wasn’t on the train,” Draco said. “But in essentials, it was the same. Potter and I were friends, even if not always in agreement. I saw that, despite all the other ways my reflection and I were the same, the other me—the Mirror me—would have chosen not to fix that cabinet. Not at the cost of what it would have done.” A silence. A breath. “Of what it did.”

Nobody prompted him this time. They just waited. Harry waited. 

“I gave up everything, for that mirror and what it gave me,” Draco said. “I gave up my fight. I gave up my strategy. I gave up my…experimental research. There was no reason to do it. There— There was no unknown element. There was just Potter, and me, and choices—bad, bad choices— Choices that were too late to undo. 

"We would have been a great pair, I think. If things had been different. He was infuriating, true, but never boring. Always a challenge. But on this side of the glass, he could only be a…” Draco flailed his hand as best as he could past the restraint, as he sought the words, “…worthy adversary. In the Mirror it was different. And I found I needed it. 

“I whiled away most of my free time in the Room of Requirement that year, just watching it. Watching me. What my life could have looked like— But, no, maybe it couldn’t. 

“I’d remind myself of that, sometimes. In moments when I’d allow myself to think it. The mirror doesn’t show you what would have happened if you’d chosen a different house, got on a different train, or chosen a different friend, does it? It only shows you what you desire most. And maybe no choice in the world could have given me what I saw. 

“It’s was torture to contemplate, but I couldn’t stop visiting, looking. I couldn’t even want to. I was a willing victim.”

“Your greatest desire,” a new voice interrupted, a simpering witch in the juror’s box, “was Harry Potter?”

Draco nose wrinkled in momentary disgust. Harry was sure his own did the same. 

“Don’t be maudlin, Madam. Not to mention, wildly inaccurate. My desire was for the life I had on the other side of the glass. The one that the likes of Harry Potter was pleased to associate with. The one that makes decisions to be proud of. 

"I grant you, though, I did want the friendship, too. I wanted the life that had Potter in it, where he was next to me, rather than in front of me and with a wand pointed at my neck.”

Harry didn’t know what to think. This felt like it should change everything, only it changed nothing. That friendship had never happened anywhere but behind a fantasy glass.

“I couldn’t put off the cabinet forever, though,” Draco said. “And when it was done, my time with the mirror would be over. I might never be in Hogwarts again. Never be able to get back into the Room of Hidden Things. Never get to the mirror. I couldn’t tolerate the thought. 

"So before I reported the successful repair of the cabinet, I took the mirror.”

“You just…took it?” Finch said. “How did you manage that—a mirror twice the size of yourself, in a castle with hundreds of nosey children, teachers and portraits?”

The edge of Draco’s mouth quirked. “I’m a wizard.”

Despite his indignation, Harry wanted to laugh. He didn’t, though. He didn’t want to disrupt this.

“I ended up being able to go back to Hogwarts after all, for my seventh year,” Draco said. “But I didn’t bring the mirror. It was torture, not being able to visit it, when it was the only thing that held any gladness for me, but Hogwarts hadn’t been safe for a long time, by then. Not for anything. I was immensely relieved I’d taken this precaution when the Room of Hidden Things was destroyed by fiendfyre later that year.

“After the final battle at Hogwarts, I couldn’t look into the Mirror or Erised. Not for a long time. But I couldn’t get rid of it, either. I just needed to know it was there; my coveted life, on the other side of the glass. For a short while, I even forgot about the mirror.

“Then I heard that Potter had become an Auror. He was a certified hunter of Persons of Interest; of people like me. I visited the mirror again. I had decided it would be the last time. 

“I had no mission to complete, and no conflict to withstand. No reason to need it. I still wanted it, of course, but objectively…if I didn’t get it rid of it then, I never would, and I’d descend into the madness of one who lives only in dreams.” He smiled grimly. “There’s the occasional madman in our extended family, and it never complimented their complexion. I didn’t care to join them.

“So I brought the mirror to the ministry—at a stroll—for archival in the Department of Mysteries. I'd be unlikely to get it back from there, if I changed my mind in a moment of weakness. Then there was a flutter of witches and wizards, much like loosened juvenile owls. Then panic and accusation, and then an uncomfortable wooden chair.” 

He met Finch’s eye. “That brings my account to present time.”

Silence. His story still hung heavily in the air.

“I see,” said Finch, eventually. “If that is all, the court is free to make judgment. Your testimony was touching…but ultimately useless. The fact remains, you absconded with the Mirror of Erised without right, and retained it for several years."

This wasn't looking good, for Draco. Harry found himself apprehensive. Draco's story may not have changed the facts, but it made it a lot harder to wish him thrown in prison.

Draco remained impassive.

“However,” Finch continued, “it is within my power to grant clemency where appropriate. Your testimony is compatible with with previously verified facts already known to the court, so we have no cause to challenge its particulars.  Essentially, the court's leniency amounts to sheer dumb luck, for you—being based on Rescue and Conservation grounds. 

“Had the Mirror of Erised remained where it was, it would be been destroyed by the fiendfyre of the Hogwarts battle—which would have been most unfortunate, for such a unique item. And the ministry is glad to have the mirror now, for safe storage. 

“In light of this, the court is willing to offer leniency in this particular case. Pending majority approval.” Finch turned to the jurors. “All those in favour of clemency, raise your hand.”

Harry didn’t expect many. Maybe only the simpering witch who thought Harry was the answer to redeeming all souls. He wasn’t surprised to see her hand rise first.

He was surprised when a few followed it. Then a few more. 

Then there was over half. 

“Your narration skills have benefited you well, today, it would appear,” Finch said to Draco. “Though, I might add, you needn’t hope for formal recognition of your preservation efforts, regarding the mirror.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Draco said.

Finch began to gather his parchments, and there was a shuffling and murmuring in the jury box as the congregated witches and wizards prepared to leave. 

The restraints around Draco’s wrists fell open, and he pulled his hands to his lap. He didn't look relieved at being pardoned. He didn't look...anything. He just looked at his slender wrists, reddened by the restraints, and rubbed at them.

“In the interests of simple curiosity,” Finch said, “if you would be so gracious to oblige…”

Draco looked at him.

“What did you see in the mirror, the final time you looked at it?” Finch asked.

Harry wanted to know this, too. He waited, eyes locked onto Draco. He hoped Draco would choose to answer the question. After all, with the trial over, he was under no obligation to.

Draco moved forward to the edge of the chair, then slowly stood. He didn’t speak. But he did what Harry had been waiting for, the whole session.

He turned his head and looked at Harry.

Harry’s breath caught in his throat. He waited for Draco to say something.

“All is prepared, Auror Potter.”

What?

Harry started, and turned. A short, shuffling Unspeakable—the man hadn’t introduced himself and Harry hadn’t asked for his name—stood off to the side. 

Recognition filtered through Harry’s mind, and he reasserted where he was.

Not a Wizengamot courtroom. The Department of Mysteries.

“Ah, um, yes of course,” Harry cleared his throat, trying to sound like the authoritative Auror he was, now. “Carry on, then. I assent to be formal witness.”

The Unspeakable waited for Harry to scrawl his signature onto the proffered parchment. 

Then Harry watched as the Mirror of Erised was lost behind a shroud, and sunk to hide below the floor. 

Harry was unaware of how the mirror came to the Ministry of Magic in the first place. It had been after he’d finished his last shift. 

He hopes it was how he saw it in the glass, but he tries not to think about it. People have gone mad, dwelling too long on Erised dreams.

 


End file.
